The organization of adjectival meanings

Abstract

It is proposed that meanings of predicative adjectives in English are organized in semantic memory by relations of antonymy and synonymy. The basic semantic structure is given by antonymous pairs, with synonymous adjectives clustering around the two antonyms. Thus, every predicative adjective is either a member of an antonymous pair or is similar in meaning to a member of such a pair. This claim is defended theoretically, then tested experimentally by comparing the times required to judge pairs of adjectives as directly or indirectly antonymous.